Job Crafting and Employees’ Performance: An Experience from Nigerian

Telecommunication Industries.

Presenter: Kabiru Ishola Genty

Lagos State University, Ojo, Lagos (Nigeria)

Introduction Employees are the most valuable asset and key source of competitive

advantage of an enterprise (Sun et al., 2020)

Theoretically speaking, job design clearly spells out the roles andduties of individual employees and work groups in the organization inrelation to the whole organizational goals and objectives.

The challenging economic situation has put increased pressure onorganizations in recent years. Most organizations are relying on theirinternal resources to achieve higher levels of performance andproductivity rather than rely on favorable external factors (Buchner,2007).

One of the most critical factors of an organization with respect to itsoutput and profitability are its employees. That is, how competitive anorganization will be is largely depends on the total sum of its work-related activities especially the way job are design and structureamong its employees (Cascio & Aguinis, 2014).

Intro… Therefore, to find maximum performance, an organization

must make an effort towards finding the most suitableemployees for a specific task.

However, it is not easy to match the optimum employee withtheir ideal tasks through employment and human resourcemanagement. Thus, job crafting becomes imperative.

Generally speaking, there is a need to create an environmentfor the employee to better adjust to his roles and dutieswithout deviating from the organization's set goals andobjectives through task and relational crafting.

Hence, the question of whether job crafting improves orworsen employees performance is still worthy of furtherresearch. It is against this backdrop that this study attempts toaccess the influence of job crafting vis-à-vis employees’performance in the Nigerian telecommunication industries.

Objectives of the StudyThe specific objectives of the study were:1) To evaluate the influence of task crafting on

employees’ task performance;

1) To determine the relationship betweenrelational crafting and organizational citizenshipbehavior drawing insights from workers of MTN,Globalcom and Airtel Nigeria Plc.

Literature ReviewConceptual ReviewJob Crafting Wrzesniewski and Dutton (2001) refer to job crafting as “the actions,

employees take to shape, mold, and redefine their jobs” (p.180).

It is often believed that employees can be motivated through the design of their job but since employees working in contemporary organizations likely has at least some latitude to modify their jobs (Oldham & Hackman, 2010).

Job crafting is conceptualized as the changes employees make to balance their job demands and job resources with their personal abilities and needs (Tims, Bakker & Derk, 2012).

Job crafting is a proactive behavior, in that individuals take an active rolein their approach towards their work, initiate future-oriented actions,and create favorable conditions (Li, Jin & Chen, 2018; Bindl & Parker,2011; Crant, 2000: Grant & Ashford, 2008).

Lit…..Wrzesniewski and Dutton (2001) identified three key job

crafting activities namely; task crafting, relational crafting, and cognitive crafting. Task crafting: It is concerned with how employees actively mould their

job tasks, changing the scope of the tasks, and by changing the meansbeing used in the accomplishment of tasks. That is, task crafting is theprocess of making work more meaningful by employees through thechanging of the amount or type of work that employees do.

Relational crafting: It has to do with the change in the quality andquantity of social interaction at work, interpersonal relationship andteamwork among others. This is when an employee change worksituation or structure as a result of deciding how he or she interacts withcolleagues (Peral & Geldenhuys, 2020).

Cognitive crafting: This is centered on reframing the employee’sperception of their job and changing the employee’s cognitiverepresentation of the job. That is, this occurs as a result of workerschanging personal perspective about their work.

Employee PerformanceEmployees’ performances have usually been measured in terms of job performancewhich is multi-dimensional. Several behaviors of the employees have an impact ontheir performance.

These behaviors include organizational citizenship or altruism as well ascounterproductive work behavior (CWB) (Dalal, 2005: Staufenbiel & Hartz, 2000).

Rotundo and Sackett (2002) have suggested that there are three broad performancedomains; task performance, organizational citizenship behavior or altruism andcounterproductive work behavior (CWB).

Task performance: These are all behaviors and outcomes that directly serve thepurpose of the organization.

Organizational citizen behavior or altruism: This is a discretionary behavior on thepart of an employee that is believed to directly promote the effective functioningof an organization without necessarily directly influencing an employees’productivity (Genty, Fapohunda, Jayeoba & Azeez, 2017).

Counterproductive work behavior (CWB): This is an intentional employee’sbehavior that is harmful to the legitimate interest of an organization (Gruys &Sackett, 2003).

Methodology This research makes use of a survey design and analysis was based on primary

data generated through a structured questionnaire administered to therespondents.

The targeted population of this study is three hundred and fifty (350) employeeswhich consist of both temporary and permanent staff of MTN, GLOBALCOM andAIRTEL Nigeria PLC, Lagos. Taro Yamane’s statistical formula was applied to get asample size of 187 participants in the study.

The sampling technique used in this study is the simple random sampling asthere is no discrimination between senior and junior staff of the organization.

The study adopted instrument developed by Niessen et al (2016) to measure theindependent variables while research instrument designed by Li et al (2018) aswell as Peral and Geldenhuys (2020) were adapted with little modification tomeasure the dependent variables.

The instrument was further tested using Statistical Package for Social Science(SPSS) to establish its reliability. The reported Cronbach Alpha is more than 0.7benchmark thresholds indicating that there was a high level of internalconsistency for the questions in the questionnaires (Li, 2015). This implies thatthe instrument is reliable, therefore, can be used for further analysis.

Data Analysis and InterpretationDemographic Characteristics of Respondents

Variables Frequency Percentage

Age Group

Below 20 years 9 4.8

20 - 30 years 81 43.3

31 - 40 years 77 41.2

41 years & above 20 10.7

Gender

Male 102 54.5

Female 85 45.5

Level of Education

Primary School 2 1.1

Secondary School Certificate 20 10.7

Vocational Education 49 26.2

Bachelor’s Degree/HND 114 61.0

Others 2 1.1

Working Experience

Below 5 years 79 42.2

5 - 10 years 79 42.2

11 - 20 years 20 10.7

20 years & above 9 4.8

Marital Status

Single 66 35.3

Married 102 54.5

Divorced 13 7.0

Widow/widower 6 3.2

Hypotheses TestingTesting of Hypothesis 1Ho=There is no significant influence of task crafting on employees’ task performance in the Selected Nigerian Telecommunication Industries.H1= There is a significant influence of task crafting on employees’ task performance in the Selected Nigerian Telecommunication Industries.

Table 2: Regression Model Summary for influence of Task Crafting on Employees’ Task Performance

Model R R Square Adjusted R Square Std. Error of the Estimate

1 .297a .088 .083 .64230a. Predictors: (Constant), Task Crafting

Table 3: ANOVAa

Model Sum of Squares Df Mean Square F Sig.

1

Regression 7.362 1 7.362 17.844 .000b

Residual 76.322 185 .413

Total 83.684 186a. Dependent Variable: Employees’ Task Performance

b. Predictors: (Constant), Task Crafting

Cont…

Testing of Hypothesis 2Ho=There is no significant relationship between relational crafting andorganizational citizenship behavior in the Selected Nigerian TelecommunicationIndustries.H2= There is a significant relationship between relational crafting andorganizational citizenship behavior in the Selected Nigerian TelecommunicationIndustries.

ModelUnstandardized Coefficients Standardized Coefficients

T Sig.B Std. Error Beta

1(Constant) 2.850 .260 10.954 .000

Task Crafting .273 .065 .297 4.224 .000a. Dependent Variable: Employees’ Task Performance

Relational CraftingOrganizational

Citizenship Behavior

Relational Crafting

Pearson Correlation 1 .331**

Sig. (2-tailed) .000

N 187 187

Organizational Citizenship Behavior

Pearson Correlation .331** 1

Sig. (2-tailed) .000

N 187 187**. Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).

Discussion of Findings The result of objective one confirms that there is a low but positive significant

influence of task crafting on employees’ task performance among the SelectedNigerian Telecommunication Industries.

This finding corroborates the work of Bohnlein and Baum (2020) on the effects ofjob crafting on individual in-role and extra-role performance. The findings in thepresent study revealed that some of the employees depend on the organization’sjob design as a source of task performance.

The result of objective two also ascertains that there is a low significant positiverelationship between relational crafting and organizational citizenship behavioramong the Selected Nigerian Telecommunication Industries.

This finding is in tandem with the work of Peral and Geldenhuys (2020) on therelationship between personality traits and organisation citizenship behaviorthrough job crafting.

The present findings show that employees are more productive and committed tothe organization when they are working with relevant individuals on the job thatallows for collaboration.

Conclusion From the study, it can be concluded that workers require a high degree of autonomy

and independence on their jobs to perform more efficiently and effectively.

Thus, other organizations can take a clue from this study finding to design job usingthe crafting ideology of the studied organizations to enhance their employees’ taskperformance.

Similarly, the findings indicate that most workers in Nigerian Telecommunicationindustries depend on the interpersonal relationships as a basis for further improvingtheir productivity.

Meanwhile, workers in the studied organizations often perform better when exposedto new individuals who can provide them with necessary skills on the job throughcollaboration or working as a team.

Therefore, employees should be granted with a high level of autonomy, authority andindependence in performing their tasks. This in turn, will boost employees' moralethereby increasing their commitment and sense of belongingness.

Finally, this study recognizes the fact that there are limitations as to the number ofrespondents and scope of study. Therefore, it is suggested that further studies should

be conducted with a larger sample and wider scope.

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